


More than Blood

by GraceEliz



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Buir-ba Fett, Chapter 14: The Tragedy, Chapter 15: The Believer, Character Study, Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hugs, Mandalorian Season Two, Second Person Boba Fett, Second person POV, boba is very funny guys i love this, catch me CRYING AND SCREAMING, chapter sixteen and I CAN NOT BELIEVE THIS IS ACTUALLY CANON HELL TO THE YEAH FAM, turned "Boba Adopts Everyone In Sight"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28116102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: You got your armour back.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Fennec Shand, Din Djarin & Boba Fett, Din Djarin & Cara Dune
Comments: 95
Kudos: 287





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maybege](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybege/gifts).



> For May.  
> Title comes from the mando'a expression "Family is more than blood", or in the mando'a, "aliit ori'shya tal'din." Why is the title not in mando'a, then, you ask? Spoilers, I respond.

You got your armour back.

Good. You should never have lost it; it was out of your control, you did everything you could to retrieve it, but now you are safe again. Your soul is back, and this child of Mandalore returned it to you, and your gratitude is hard to express, nebulous as it is. Something deep within you has settled, stopped the clawing outraged reaching that has kept you alive so long.

But.

You failed.

It sticks like a barb against the skin, knowing that the Child is taken, after you swore to protect it. You wouldn’t have truly hurt it – probably – but you feel bad that you threatened them, then broke your deal. You would have stayed anyway, you can’t leave this exhausted man here on this empty planet after he watched his home explode, which you know the pain of, you remember that happening to yourself, but your sympathy is flavoured in the desperate relief of having your soul again.

“This is all that survived,” he says when he comes back up to Fennec and yourself, and he sounds hollowed out. Devastated, like when you lost your own home, like the scooped-out emptiness of waking up soft-shelled with your skin gone.

Buir. “I want you to take a look at something,” you rasp as you pull up the chain code, watch it flicker a moment before settling in knife-sharp gold slashes. _Trace your fingers down, Boba,_ you hear his voice echo – your voice – _and find me here, then find yourself, ad’ika. This is who we are: wards of Mandalore. Mando’ade._ Jango Fett, foundling of Jaster Mereel, who fought in the civil wars and wore the title of Mand’alor until part of him died in chains. Now, old as you are, chained as you have been, you realise he never got that part back. It’s the same piece you left on Geonosis, the shards of you scattered, on Tattooine, on Coruscant, in the wake of every evil deed. Dar’beskar’gam, dar’manda. What level of dar’manda makes one, well, dar?

What is the point of no return?

It is whatever it must be, you know, watching as this man crumbles and pulls himself together with the sort of practice that makes the cold coal of your heart bleed for him.

You survived because you couldn’t bear the thought of not doing so.

“Your father was a foundling,” he says after enough of a pause that you understand he too must be a foundling.

This man, you think, has survived on the behalf of other people.

You will have to find a way to comfort him, later. He will survive this too, but you want all of him to do so, not just whatever shred of him is left when you find his child.

The Empire.

That is another obstacle you had not anticipated. Remnants are one thing but this, full scale raids and ships and Moff Gideon who you are sure you don’t know but hate anyway? Well. You are, after all, Boba Fett, and you know this man’s reputation too and about the child and its bounty – both their bounties – and, well. Fear is an emotion that has raced your veins all your life. What is a bit more of it?

You get everyone on the ship with the sort of precision your brothers (and they were your brothers, you have had many many years to reconcile what you did to them with the truth, and you know that there are things you don’t know and that the Jedi will know some of it at least) were known for and prided themselves on. You will take off and set course, and then drop down and check Fennec hasn’t been at his throat. The man needs some time, to process, and you’re going to ensure he has it. She will need a minute alone too, to calm herself before you come check on her mechanics. Fuel, course and heading, the jetpacks both stowed and the Mandalorian’s beskar spear strapped in tight with Fennec’s wooden staff and your own club and rifle.

_A man is more than his armour and family name, ad’ika. All of us are made of our choices._

_What are you, buir?_

_I think I was lost, but now I can see again. These jetii, they will pay for the hurts they did to my people, and then – well. Do not worry about it. Stay close, ad’ika._

You should have asked. Not that anything would have changed, really, buir was possibly even more stubborn than you were, but still. Even in your teenage fury and loss and loneliness, the Jedi didn’t deserve what they got.

Something grinds in your lower back as you stand, and your knee aches with the low tenderness that means you should probably sit or even lie still until you have to get up and land the Slave. The ladder is just a touch harder to scale than it was, yet still ingrained, still muscle memory of ten-twenty-thirty-forty years of habit. You’ve done more in worse condition than you are now.

“Fen.”

“I haven’t done anything,” she immediately responds without looking up from her blasters, as you knew she would, and you shake your head, helmet still on, just sort of enjoying the sensation of having it back, like regaining a lost limb. “Promise.”

“Go sit upstairs,” you say gruff but fond, and she does without argument. She’s a good kid, you think fondly, and wonder what your buir would have thought of her. “What do you need, Mandalorian?”

He shrugs a bit helplessly, still angry but also rapidly changing into grief, in the lines of his shoulders, the tension of his hands, the slight sway as he tries not to buckle into a heap of grief and self-recrimination.

Well, you suppose, you’re either going to muck this up or help him and the attempt is as important as the result when it comes to grief and loss and rescue. “Come. Help me scrub my armour.”

“Why.”

With a low grunt you settle yourself on the floor and begin to unstrap. “The paint stripper is in the locked cabinet under your beviin.” The mando’a tastes nice, on your tongue. The Mandalorian twitches in what you think could be excitement.

“Jorhaa’gar mando’a?”

Deconstructing that sentence takes you a moment. “I believe you are asking if I speak mando’a. the unfortunate answer is a no.”

He slumps.

“Should you care to teach me, as I work,” you offer without looking at him, arranging the paint stripper near where you plan to make him sit, “then that would be appreciated.”

The Mandalorian sits and you smile behind your bucket at his mild curiosity. “’lek.”

“I would like to remove my helmet. You are not going to be made to look at my face if you wish not to.”

He leans away almost in fear, turns his head rapidly away at the last possible moment before you settle the ancient beskar on the floor. “N'eparavu takisit,” he gasps, hands clenching so tight it must ache.

“It is alright, Mandalorian,” you assure him gently without moving beyond tilting the helmet to assess the damage to it. “My beliefs allow me to remove my helmet – I know I am more than my plates, just as you are. I did not ask you to look at me, and so your apology is unnecessary; you have done only what you believe is the most appropriate course, and I admire you for it. You are a man of great honour.”

Cautiously he turns back towards you, still curved and tense like a wounded beast, held back yet drawn in.

With a grunt you nudge the stripper and a rag to him. “Start on whatever piece you want. I will work on the helmet.”

He takes up a pauldron, a rag and the stripper, begins the small circles immediately. The action will soothe him as it does you, as it used to soothe buir. Simple, repetitive action. “Buy’ce.”

“Helmet?”

“Elek.”

You allow the smile to grow on your face. “Buy’ce. Vor’e,” you offer, and he relaxes just a little further. There will be time to talk about his creed, later, hopefully; in the time after finding his child, in the slow quiet of post-mission. For now, this silence of stripping paint and slow silent breath and occasional offered words is enough to take part of his mind off his pain.

Survive this and I will keep you all safe, you think.

Within an hour, you have learned that the Mandalorian has more mando’a than you do but not as much as the Armourer, the alor, of his tribe. Neither does he know how many of them are left after the attack on them at Navarro, or where they may be. He has taught you the words for armour, for weapons; words you are beginning to remember, if only a little, the meanings tainted by vague sounds of rain and the sensation of whitewhitewhite and loneliness. After all, buir died when you were ten and he was not what one would call popular with other Mandalorians, and it has been well over thirty years since then. It sounds like you are barely older than this shining Mando, perhaps around five years by your estimate, but you suppose that’s the difference between growing up with security as he did and growing up in war and prisons and under the hands of the worst people in the galaxy. Is it only thirty years, you wonder? Can that be so?

“Blue,” he asks, and you repeat the mando’a. Red, green, justice, revenge, joy, sorrow, loss and lost. I and you and they, how to indicate a possessive and how to indicate negatives. “Jate’shya.”

You allow your face expressiveness, allow him to watch the slight twitch of your eyes as you think it over. “Good – better?”

“’lek, better,” he confirms, seeming pleased, before he twists his head and notices the Child is not here. This is perhaps the fourth time he’s done it, searched for the slight form of his child and been broken by the reminder of the loss. His shoulders lower as if burdened by the weight of an entire planet.

“Are you done?”

He nods, both of you meaning more than just the aged beskar.

“Put the stripper away, then,” you encourage, setting your brushes down. “Let’s have something to drink. I have a few straws, somewhere.” Rising draws a few creaks and cracks out of your worn body – Tattooine really took it out of you, huh – and he leaps up in impressive silence to offer you a hand up, which you wave off. “Back under the beviin, please.”

He tucks the bottles and rags away, re-latching the cabinet. “Do you think,” he begins quietly, before trailing off as he hesitates. This is good, you think, his allowance of vulnerability, but it also concerns you a little. How harsh has his life been, that he is so willing to lower defenses just based on your willingness to allow him his Creed and promise to help him retrieve his child? “Do you think he’s okay?”

You give the matter due consideration as you tidy up your still-unpainted plates, stacking them neatly with your helmet the crowning glory, the wet ones lined up alongside. “I think he will be. I can’t begin to imagine what he’s going through, but the Force will be telling him you’re coming for him.”

The confidence in your voice gives him strength, straightening his shoulders as he turns back around to face you. “You’re sure?”

“I am.” It’s quite clear he knows even less about the Jedi than he does about Mandalore; you will have to remember to catch him up sometime. “Come drink.”


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of 14 and into 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate 15. i hate it. i had to rewatch the start for this and it was okay then he put on the trooper armour and - no. i need to slap someone over it.  
> din has been through an extremely traumatic experience which was not only a personal violation but also quite possibly a sort of cultural suicide in his own mind in this series of fic we WILL be exploring this

It takes too long to fall asleep. Behind your eyes, awoken by the sharing of those half-remembered words over cleaning your armour in a pale ghostly echo of your memories with buir, white-plated soldiers fall. Towering above you, twice the width, your father’s face yet simply not. You held a blaster to one’s face, so long ago, and found yourself unable to pull the trigger.

It turns out, when they’re hidden under white plates, the guilt is far slower to strike.

You hesitate less to shoot those white-shelled stormies the Empire clings to even less than you, as a raging child, hesitated to shoot the painted men who shared your face. In your life, you have killed your brothers, and you were willing to – after all, they were just clones, and you are Boba Fett your father’s son. Even now, guilt is a half-hearted limp little thing, like a plant trying to grow in the hold of a ship. There is no guilt about the stormtroopers you oblitered not more than a handful of hours ago; there is never.

Sleep, you decide, pushing all long-felt guilt away. Sleep like the soldier you are – the weapon you were designed to be.

“Boba?”

You make a soft noise, lift your head up and blinking sleep out of your eyes, a low _mrrh_ like a loth-cat escaping your chest. The low glow of hyperspace gives enough light you can see his outline, shining just inside the dark cockpit. How peculiar you didn’t wake up – usually you’ve snapped alert before anyone gets half-way up the ladder, but then how long since you last ran with a Mandalorian? How long since you last truly slept, come to that?

“Can we go to Nevarro?”

Is this what having kids feels like, waking up in the middle of the night to answer questions? Maybe he’s just treating you as alor’ad, relying on a legend for strength, an anchor. “Sure. Why?”

“I have a friend,” he admits quietly, and you hear a low shuffle. “She can help us.”

“Okay,” you yawn, “we’ll go to Nevarro.” Then before he thinks you’re getting up from your comfortable seat to do it now, “I trust you, go change course.”

After a slow moment in which you’re almost back asleep, he asks, uncertain, “are you sure?”

“’lek,” you grunt without opening your eyes, “go work, ad’ika,” which is what buir used to say to you – you really have turned into your father’s echo, huh. He moves forwards, clicking quietly away for a few seconds.

“We can finish this jump, then fly.”

You grunt at him again. “Good.”

He doesn’t leave, and you resign yourself to being awake. “What’s wrong, Mandalorian?”

“Can I stay up here, with you?”

“’lek. Udesii,” you say, yawn again, and settle in. “Kuur.” He hushes, and you slip into the light haze of sleep with hyperspace behind your eyelids and the memory of Kamino’s rains in your ears.

Fen knocks loudly on the cockpit door just as you’re strapping yourself into you vambraces, feeling more powerful than ever before, wrapped as you are in the beskar passed from ba’buir to buir to you. “Wake up, oldie.”

“You’re too cheerful,” you snip without looking up.

She sighs dramatically, drops into the passenger seat. Mando had spent the last few hours huddled in the pilot’s chair, looking more like a child than such a large shining warrior should be able to, but he left a bit back, seeming a little more settled in himself. “One day, I’m actually going to wake you up.”

Fondly, you flip a rude sign she probably doesn’t understand – it’s one you know was used during the Wars, before the Purges, before everything changed forever. There’s a chance it died out of use with the GAR. “Never.”

Fennec leans over, checking the controls. You let her, it’s a little nothing that helps her feel more in control of herself and her surroundings. It does nobody any know harm to allow it, especially since her continued existence literally hinges on her cooperation with you. “It’s nipping.”

“I’ll have a look when we land,” you answer. “Drop?”

“Five minutes.”

A small smile twitches across your scarred face. “Thank you for waking me up.”

She grunts and leaves. Perhaps you took that old woman’s advice to affirm their good decisions and always explain your emotions a little too literally, but hey. She’s an assassin almost your own age, you probably can’t be too careful. “Get dressed,” she yells up the ladder, “old man!”

He sets into Nevarro alone – Fen is legally dead and you are long gone, which is for the better, and you remember Greef Karga. You shot him once. So, you all know, it is far safer for him to trek into town alone and find this Cara Dune alone. Anyway, you muse as his shining figure disappears towards the white walls, he will need a minute with his vod where he isn’t watching Fennec and yourself with half an eye.

“I’m stuck,” Fen calls, voice echoing enough that you know she’s in her sleeping-pod.

You sigh. “What did you do?”

She gasps in mock offense. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You probably did,” you counter as you close the ramp and pick up the crate of tools. Under your breath, you add, “that’s what you said last time.” She’s probably tried to do something you’ve warned her off – such as backflips, and picking things up whilst twisting. And swinging on the ladder. And touching the cogs as they move. Fascinating as her new innards are, and proud as she should be to still be alive, she could stand to be perhaps a touch less inquisitive. “Let me see it.”

“I’m fine, I can do it,” she snaps.

You halt outside her pod, extremely unamused. “Have you forgotten that you are held together by screws, currently?”

There’s a muttered curse you know she picked up from you. “No.”

“Let me see,” you order. When did this become your life? Thirty-odd years ago, yes, you know. “It’s a ten-by-three gap, Fen,” you continue, a bit astounded that she has somehow once again managed to cause herself a problem.

She looks steadily at the slender spanners, sonics and screwdrivers and tiny levers all in the soft felt roll. “I may have pushed the boulder down the hill that crushed those stormies.”

You are not surprised. “Well,” you say, “that would do it, yes.” She is slightly cramped, belt unbuttoned to reveal that just as you suspected the internal mechanism has seized up. “Please try not to break anything else.”

There is a woman – the vod, you assume – strolling alongside the Mandalorian, strong and built heavier than Fennec. This would be the local enforcer, judging by the quality of her clothes and the satchel over her shoulder. “And you found Boba Fett? You have the wildest stars, Mando,” she is saying.

Mando doesn’t say anything in response, but his shrug is extremely eloquent.

“This is why I don’t hang with you full time,” she continues. “Can’t keep up.”

“You would fight a rancor.”

Dune grins. “And win. I would win.”

Amused, you let yourself half-smile under the helmet as they pass you, curiosity clear in her eyes. Hopefully she will get on with Fennec, and not try to kill her. Preferably, none of the inevitable chaos will happen inside the ship. A frown replaces the amusement as you notice the fresh pain in Mando – in how he drops into a seat without prompting, how he doesn’t react to Fen’s huffy comment about strapping weapons away or protest when she takes the rifle and straps it in place.

Once the door is safely shut, the woman’s arms go around the Mandalorian with ease, as if they do this not-quite-never, but he seems still stiff enough that you conclude they’re not exactly accustomed to regular physical affection. They seem more like the sort to spar, wrestle or push or put their hands in each other’s faces and call it affection. With a great if inaudible sigh, he relaxes, leaning further into her as she resettles her arm. She looks to you as her smile slips, daring you to say something about his unaccustomed tenderness, but you just smile unseen and tip your helmet and leave them to it.

“Go to bed, Fennec,” you call up to the cockpit. She mutters something sarcastic and probably insulting, but you clang your armour on the ladder just like buir used to do with you, make a low sound of warning. Screw it, but if you’re their dad now, you’re going to act like it.

Everyone needs a hug sometimes, and that includes her; you’re waiting when she reaches the floor, and very gently draw her in one-armed for just a moment, just long enough for it to be a hug.

“Don’t kill us going into hyperspace,” she tells you firmly as she steps away, just like she did the first time you left Tattooine and every jump since.

Up in the cockpit, headed to pick up a criminal who owes Mando a favour or will do the job by fear, you take in the quiet noises of life on the ship for a moment before taking off. Two in the hold, one in her bunk – what was once your father’s bunk – and you where you always sleep. “Go work, ad’ika,” you breathe to yourself. “Nothing gained by loitering in the ghosts of your distant nightmares.”

Hyperspace kicks in quickly with the usual jolt, but you don’t have time to enjoy the flickering stars before there’s an aggressive ring of beskar-on-beskar and a yell of fury. You scramble down to where you left them – they were hugging literally minutes ago, but then again, Mandalorians are known for love languages bordering on violent – ready to tear into them, only to stop in your tracks. Cara looks afraid, the beviin pinned behind her against the hull as she holds her hands out at Mando. It’s the sort of situation where you pop your bucket on reflex to better glare them into submission. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” grits out Mando, not turning his gaze from Cara, but the twitch of his knuckles gives it away. Still, lying to you is bold, and you’ve always appreciated boldness.

You stride over and take the beviin with no resistance from the once-trooper. “Cara, you may take my bunk tonight. Mandalorian, you will sleep in the cockpit. Go to bed.”

She opens her mouth to resist, but you give her a true Fett glare – one that speaks of horrors she can probably only imagine, fires of dead Mandalorians and the screams of everyone you’ve ever hurt – to silence her. “Fine. Goodnight,” she snaps and struts off.

Now you are alone with him, the tight-knotted anger begins to leach out of him like water off a melting block of ice. Under your stern gaze his helmet drops, shoulders gradually lowering until you feel he is ready to talk – or listen. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Mandalorian, that was not nothing. Did she say something, or did you?”

After a few seconds in which you imagine his jaw must be grinding enough to cause a migraine, he manages to grit out, “she did. I overreacted.”

“I do not imagine,” you tell him quietly, watching how he tenses up all over again, “that this was an overreaction. You are in a lot of pain and under great stress.” You turn, tuck the beviin away safely with your club – an ever expanding collection of weaponry, like this little expanding family. At some point, you should probably inform that family is what you are. “Thank you for telling me.”

His whole body goes limp, exhausted. “’m sorry.”

“Go up,” you tell him quietly, restraining the urge to get Cara back in here and scold them both for how dangerous it would be to fight, how foolish they are to waste their energy now. “I will bring you food and you need to eat it, and then we will sit together.” When you were a child, during the war, having the routine established and knowing where your next steps would lead was the only thing that kept you going, kept you functioning through your violent refusal to cooperate with the Jedi who killed your father. “Now, Mandalorian.”

Reluctant, he turns, looks at you a few times with that slight tilt of the helmet. “Sorry.” When you don’t respond he climbs up the ladder, hauling himself up until you hear the cockpit snick shut behind him.

“Sithspit,” you breathe, wondering whether you’re even going to reach the kid at this rate. “Stars give us strength, and patience.”

Mando’s vod – vod’ika, the word echoes down the past, who had called you that? – has the necessary files to get this Migs Mayfeld off the prison planet and into your ship, which you frankly disapprove of. People aren’t supposed to just turn up on your ship, it’s your home, a safe space, and he doesn’t fit in. You leave him down on the deck with Fennec, Mando, and his vod, retreating up to fly, trusting them to keep the peace.

You don’t trust him. He’s scared stiff of the Mandalorian even more than he’s scared of you, and you’re very vindicated by his intimidation – although he doesn’t actually seem to know who you are. His reaction to Mando is very similar to your reactions to Aurra, when you were a child. Hunted. Haunted. Just what did Mando do, that the prison planet is the preferable option? Your broken ad, his shining armour, his vod and the missing ad.

What did he do?

Still. He hands over the planet’s name, Morak, easily enough, despite his initial resistance: says there’s a refinery where the information is accessible.

Hanging safely in the void of space, surrounded by stars, you feel – you don’t know, until he slings a careless insult towards Mando and you are the one who reacts, turning around to face him stern and harsh and all that indomitable power your father had, and he shushes. He could bear to be more afraid of you, but you don’t wish to harm the plan’s chances, harm the child’s chances of returning home to his buir (and maybe to you, too, ba’buir).

The problem lies in the genetic testing: this is just the sort of Empire bullshit that you’ve always known. Fucking Palpatine. In the face of this new development Mando’s taken over planning, very efficiently, obviously well-used to being either solo or in charge – and that’s fine with you. Technically, you’re long retired, only here for paying a debt (and your old softened heart, but this Mayfeld doesn’t need to know that). You do not want Mayfeld going in alone, but he’s an unfortunately necessary step in the plan to retrieve the Child. Neither do you want Mando going in – as she says, Fennec is wanted, Cara too, and he turns near desperately to you.

“Let’s just say they might recognise my face,” you quip. Nobody laughs.

You are being wasted on these people. That was, with no exaggeration, the most perfect setup to the perfect joke, ever. Wasted. Still, you can accept that this is a particularly stressful situation.

“I won’t take off my helmet,” warns Mando and you think – oh. Oh, no. There is a low dread rising up your stomach, the dread sparked by Geonosis, Aurra, Darth Vader, the sarlacc, tight spaces and forced choices. A very bad feeling.

Please come back safe, you think, and wonder when you grew old and soft enough to have already started calling this shining warrior yours.


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fallout.  
> (posted BEFORE i watch the last episode because gdi favreau just take my 6737 (and counting) words of space found family as canon okay)

Between the two women, you know that it is being handled on their end, but sitting and waiting has never been so stressful. Still the nervous energy remains, and you want all three of your little family held within the safety of your ship, where nothing will hurt them. This waiting is the exact opposite of fun; it’s tense, not being able to hear them on the comms, and whilst you’ve definitely been in far more stressful situations with far less communication and way more likelihood of betrayal, there’s a weight to this mission, heavy in your gut like a rock.

This does not impact your focus. Old habits, and all that.

“What’s taking so long,” you breathe, flex your hands around the control.

_Patience is the one true path into success, Boba. You have to be patient for the target, be patient with your equipment, with your allies. Be patient until their throats are bared for you to tear them out._

You were always rather more suited to infiltration than sniping, to be honest: fast and brutal and possessing far less of the dangerous patience than your father.

“Lift out,” comes Fennec’s voice over the comms and you sigh in relief. The rattle of gunfire doesn’t stress you at all, it’s been the symphony of your entire life since the Nulls and Alphas and CCs were old enough to bear arms. Personally, you’re in the camp of training children as soon as they’re old enough to understand orders, but someone once told you that was a Clone mindset, and well. They weren’t wrong.

As great as it is to have the Mandalorian back onboard and the rhydonium plant flaming and bursting below, you want Mayfeld off your ship and away from your aliit.

Cara and Fen get back not long after you land in the clearing, none the worse for the hike through the jungle. Mando is once again himself, ensconced on his beskar’gam, but you are sure that you heard him. Just a single sob, but so drowned in pain you would have thought the world was ending.

Perhaps, you consider, thinking about how his helm had been in the bag of armour Cara returned to the ship, it had.

“Boba,” greets Fennec.

“Put your rifle away,” you respond without turning around.

She snorts. “Nice to see you too.”

“You were in little danger. Your skills as an assassin are exceptional.”

“You say the nicest things,” she agrees dryly and laughs and heads down to the hold.

The next one to venture up is Cara, relaxed now the mission is over and a bit excited for whatever comes next. “I sent Mayfeld away, I figured you wouldn’t want him around. Mando seems to have an idea of what to do next, though.”

With a grunt you flick a sign of gratitude towards her, supplementing it with the head tilt that anyone in the old days would have known meant sincerity – she blinks, surprise reflected in the startle of her shoulder, and you remember she was a shock trooper. Maybe she knows some of these old GAR signs, the ones spread and created into an entire language by the clones.

“He – I think something must have happened. There was a shootout, I don’t really know what,” she trails off. Both of you know that she knows what probably happened, the reason for Mando’s stress, the reason everyone in that room was left dead; the knowledge is heart-deep, but so is the reluctance to voice it.

If it is something you are meant to know, he will tell whoever he wants or needs to in his own time.

The time, as it turns out, arrives after recording the message he sent to Gideon: a slow, deliberated threat, and behind it all the weight of a broken Mandalorian – and Gideon knows his Galactic history, knows the horrors that can be laid at the feet of just one such man.

 _Just a simple man trying to find my way through the galaxy,_ he’d told the Jedi who became High General; just a man who leaves trails of coals in his feet and those who wore his face lit the flames until the entire Galaxy was burned by it. What fires would this one leave, you find yourself wondering? Or would it be ice, like the touch of beskar?

“My name is Din Djarin,” he blurts out, stood but still lingering near the same seat he’s been using since you picked him up. A security, a consistency, when everything else is change. You look up, concern bubbling up in your chest at the loud admission, startled out of your half-meditation. “I was found by the Mandalorians as a child and swore the creed when I was eighteen-standard.”

You sit up straighter. Something is wrong, for him to be telling you this. Until now he has shown no inclination of even wanting to take the steps towards being known, perhaps not content but understanding of being in your debt whilst also under your guidance. He’d refused his name and you had not asked again.

“My name is Din,” he repeats with a sob, and falls to his knees in the midst of his next step towards you. Alarmed, you dart over, get your arm around his shoulders without trapping him in. It’s like a string is cut, with the touch of your blacks to his beskar, leaving you both sat on the floor uncomfortably as he almost clings to you with one hand as the other claws at his thigh-plate. “They saw me, I took off my helmet,” he sobs, “they have part of me and I didn’t want it. I feel – I feel –”

Your heart cracks for him. Of course you’d known something went wrong, you had suspected, it was the logical conclusion that he’d had to remove his helmet and show his face. “Oh, ad’ika,” you breathe, tighten your arm as he keens. “It will be alright.”

“No it won’t,” he cries out, swinging his head up desperately. “It will never be alright.”

 _Take a slow breath, Boba, and think about your options. You are ad be Mereel._ “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

He shakes his head, leaning in then away, rocking slightly, and you have to crane your neck to avoid getting your nose cracked by the gleaming beskar. “Please, no,” he begs, barely responding to your quiet hushing. “Please don’t make me, Boba.”

“I will never ask you to remove your armour, ad,” you swear, still and rock-like, unmoving under the force of his storm. You remember Aurra, the gun to Ponds’ face, the pain and realisation that nononono –

You had a bad feeling about this. All you had to do was get the ship in position and lift them out; but he has done this, given in or given up some key part of his identity. If he is dar’manda in his own eyes now – which you suppose you are, too, not that your line’s Creeds have ever run that deep, your own is a sort of broken-hearted adaptation of ba’buir Jaster’s – then what does that make him?

 _Suicide_ , you remember someone saying about someone, maybe one of the clones, _removing your helmet on the planet is suicide but it’s more than that, there are faster and less obvious ways to die. You can just simply let it happen, our brains are complex enough that it can be done. Removing your helmet on the field is rejection._

And there it is, that connotation you’d been trying to recall, to reconcile. Mando – Din – gave up his soul, or feels like he has.

“Dar’manda, dar’tome, jare, jare,” he chokes. Not Mandalorian you recognise, and the other must mean similar, but you remember jare – dead, by one’s own hand. Dead-souled, or as good as dead. Who taught you this? Why are these words, these understandings, here, yet without context?

You can only hold on to him as he finally lets himself break. “Kuur,” you croon, all the words you know to be soft and quiet, just like when Fennec woke up screaming the first time.

He shakes like a leaf in a gale. “I’m dead, Boba,” he keens, curled into himself around the grief, and this you remember, your father’s helm in your hands in the shadow of the arena where the Clone Wars began, where the end of days came. Just a dead boy walking, you’d been. “My soul, I gave it up, I gave it all up and I don’t – I would do it again. I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” spits Din, finally just Din and not the untouched untouchable silver-skinned Mandalorian with a bounty that tells of personal insult. “I would do it again and again for him.”

“Good,” you snarl, fire in your own stomach, “good. Your child is the most important thing in your life, understand? What is the future?”

“Ade.”

_When you are afraid, Boba, I will press my head to yours._

_Keldabe!_

_Kiss, that’s right, ad, but remember that it’s more than a touch. It’s a connection and an offering, you understand? It means strength._

You’d grinned up at him and blown your curls off your brow. _Ni kar’tayli, buir._ I understand, you’d said, but you hadn’t until he was finally gone and nobody was left to give you strength.

“Din,” you whisper, and he shivers as if he’s about to throw up, “ni kar’tayli.” The press of your brow to his cold helmet is shocking enough you feel sand under your nails, blaster-smoke and burning in your nose, screams of fallen Jedi in your ears. “Cry for yourself now, child.”

He does, and you wonder who that voice belongs to, telling you to cry.


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are the word _petrification_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that is probably the best line about boba ever tbh i'm so proud i managed to get it in

His sobs trigger your memories; crying and crying and crying at the loss and rage and anger. Later, tears in your eyes as you realised what you’d missed by being the chosen son; tears as you held a blaster to their faces and pulled the trigger. You’d quickly grown out of such weakness as that. When had you most recently cried?

In there. The dark, the slicing pain like nothing you had ever remembered. When you woke up, in a bed under the hands of the Tuskens – and Force only knew why they’d even tried to keep you alive, you certainly hadn’t stuck around to find out – and realised what you’d lost. The last reminder. The only thing that made you Boba Fett your father’s son, instead of just another nameless clone. Yes, you’d cried for yourself then.

Slowly, oh so slowly, his shaking sobs slow, diminishing into whimpers, reducing down into careful breaths. “m’sorry,” he croaks.

You tighten your arm around his back. “As am I.”

When he goes to sit up you allow the motion, leaving him to create a bubble of personal space. He can’t quite seem to stop sniffling, miserable and aching noises that have your sympathy. You’re really feeling sympathy these days, which is probably a healthy thing. His gloved hand rises up to rub at his nose, and you have to stifle your laughter. How many times have you done that yourself, forgotten that your armour isn’t actually your skin and tried to eat through it?

His voice cracks when he asks if you’ll look away for a minute. You’re most of the way turned around before you remember that there’s some softish rags in the ‘fresher, and he’d be better with one of those. “Din?”

His flinch is audible. Beskar, when it strikes itself, rings, melodic, if a little harsh on the ears.

“Sorry. I’m going to get you something to clean your face. Wait here.”

The shining buy’ce tips, light rippling across it. “Vor’e.”

After he’s cleaned himself up, helmet sealed back into place, and some of his armour removed, just enough to make sitting comfortable, he looks over to you out of the corner of his eye. He looks like a bird, a shriek-hawk in beskar, grounded but never for long, head cocked assessingly. “Can I – trust you?”

_If you didn’t trust me at least a bit, Fett, you wouldn’t have left me alive._

_Bold words from someone like you._

_Hah! Your son like this?_

_I’m sure he will be. You best trust us,_ and you’ve forgotten the name in the intervening decades, _we’re all you have._

You raise a brow at him. “You already do.”

After a brief hesitation he accepts this as truth, relaxing a little, shoulders no longer quite as tight around his ears, but his hands are flexing, nervous in his lap. “You – I don’t think you’re going to approve,” he admits, voice raw in the way it was when all that was left of his home was a beviin he didn’t really know how to use.

“I might not,” you agree, “but you’re not going to know until you tell me.”

“There was a woman, a while ago. She was good, kind. We…I almost let her take it off,” he whispers. You don’t say anything, knowing to break his stride would be to bruise the confession before it has run its course. Lancing a wound, slicing open infected flesh, spilling out words, they’re all necessary parts of living. “I wanted to, but – my Creed is who I am. I can’t imagine...”

You hum soothingly, and he manages a shaking breath, something in the balance of his torso making you think of a frightened animal too afraid not to walk into the trap lying before it, like he craves that stillness of being able to cling to someone he knew he couldn’t break yet is afraid of the rejection. “To be dar’manda has always been my nightmare,” Din murmurs, vocoder almost buzzing out the words. “And to be jare, that’s worse, because rejecting my Creed when it’s everything I have ever known and stood for is a rejection of myself. Does any of what I have done matter now?”

“Do you believe that you are still Mandalorian?”

“Yes,” he answers immediately. Then he flinches back from you as hard as if you’d stuck him in an open wound. “But I failed and I lost my child.”

His child. Finally he says it, claims it; but you don’t think he actually knows he has. He is as oblivious to his fatherhood as he is to yours, it seems. “Are you doing everything you can?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” you nod decisively, as if by your word alone a thing is to made so, “your Creed remains.”

“But I broke it!”

Resigned to talking in circles until you’re either dizzy or asleep, you stand up. “If we’re going to keep talking about this, come up to the cockpit where we’ll be more comfortable, hm?” Whatever keeps popping in your back should probably be treated rather gently until you get Fennec to prod it into compliance. “You go on up, I’ll get you a drink and a straw.”

Fennec is leaning on the door of the galley when you turn around from filling up two bottles of water. There are no unlidded cups on this ship. “I know why you kept me. Why are you keeping him?”

“He needs someone.”

She scoffs, standing up and moving closer, and you give her a cautionary glare she only rolls her eyes at. “You were bored and I was a challenge. You have your ship back now, are you still bored?”

“No,” you say quietly and hope Din isn’t hearing this. “I keep you now because I am fond of you.”

Another huff of air as she crosses her eyes. “For now.”

Okay, this is probably the ideal time to embrace your newfound willingness to be buir, or the vicious tone of her voice is going to provoke you into words you’ll regret. “Fennec, I do like you. I keep you around because I feel very affectionately towards you. I would like you to stay around.”

Fen raises her chin in defiance. “And if I wanted to leave?”

You don’t grace her with a reaction. “You could, but how long would you last?”

Tension stretches between you, testing and straining against the perceived constraints of her freedom. “I would manage.”

Anger, sudden and unexpected yet familiar, so familiar, this pit that has never been filled, the one you poured all that pain into when you were a child and nobody knew you as anything but another one of the same-faced white soldiers. It sparks and bubbles, demanding recompense; demanding that she be made to show appreciation. “You would die.”

When she rears back she moves so fast that the slender braids drawing back from her temples whip forwards against your neck. “Oh, so you think that little of me?”

“I think a great deal of you, Fennec Shand,” you hiss, “but I wonder if I should not have left you behind to wait.”

Hurt, sudden and unexpected and just as unrewarding as you knew it would be, flickers across her face as she searches in yours. Stone is more expressive than you are, you know, she would be better off reading your beskar helmet. You are the word _petrification_.

She turns and strides away, slamming her sleeping-pod door behind her. A moment later, just as you understand that yes, you did mess that up, it is your fault and you need to fix it before it festers, Cara pops out of your bunk.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Take your vod these and give him a hug,” you order instead of replying. “Do not forget the straw.”

Cara rolls her eyes. “I’ve known him way longer than you have,” she reminds you, but she doesn’t ask any questions, warily sidling up the ladder to the cockpit where you know Din is waiting.

In one of the upper cupboards is a box of expensive chocolate, tucked away here after a mission a long, long time ago. Frankly, you think they must be exceptionally unhealthy to still be in date, even barely. Fennec will like them (her digestive system can probably handle it, you’re willing to risk it). Knocking gently on the pod door, you hear her shift on the cot.

“Go away.”

“I have chocolate.”

There is a stillness; this is the moment. She will either turn you away, and this hurt will continue to grow until it explodes, or she will let you in with your conciliation gift and things will be resettled. The door opens, revealing her hard face. “What.”

You hold them out to her. “Don’t eat them all at once. I’m sorry. I should not have said any of that; it isn’t true. I don’t want you to leave.”

There. Blunt and pointed, just how you prefer it, free from any of that irritating Imperial wordiness you spent so long working around. Her face softens, only slightly, but enough that she looks less like a painted statue. “I don’t want to leave either,” she admits as if someone is likely to overhear.

“Good,” and it’s settled again, the anger abated, the needling threat of loneliness conquered. Impulsively, because she looks like she needs it more than you, you step into the pod and crouch down – there goes the knee, again, really, you are not that old – and bonk your forehead off hers. Blinking in surprise, she nonetheless returns the gesture, and you smile.

_Keldabe. It means strength._

Do you look like your father, you wonder?

“Stand up before you get stuck down here,” she teases, and you huff out something about cheek, but do as she says. It’s funny, how you feel so parental over her when she’s more or less your own age. It’s probably, you admit, because she was hurt so badly and you fixed her. There grew a certain degree of only mildly unhealthy attachment there before you even really got to know each other.

“You’re a good kid.”

“Not a good person though.”

You shrug, unbothered entirely. “Didn’t say you were. Neither am I.” Neither was buir – Force, he was possibly worse than you, a clone army? Really, buir, you want to ask. Some part of you thinks that the silver Mando and his vod may be better, though. Good.

“I think I’m older than you.”

Again you shrug. “I have no idea when I was decanted,” you admit easily, and then both of you freeze for a second as you realise you just said decanted. Never in your life have you used decanted to refer to yourself. “Born, I meant to say born.”

It would be worth it if any of them had laughed at _they might recognise my face._

Her curiosity is near tangible and follows you up to the cockpit, door still open. Tactical retreat. Din – you need to check if he wants you to call him Din or if that is too new a bruise – and Cara are sat on the floor, leant into each other in a manner that makes you wonder, since you seem to have your fallen brothers on the brain this week, whether that intimacy is a think you could have had, in another life, if you’d been less encouraged to see those with your buir’s face as less than animals. “Good?”

After a second too long Din nods. “Jate.”


	5. five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end, or a new beginning?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My theme song is the Bitch is Back by Elton John, apparently. It seems accurate.  
> There will be one more chapter in which Din Gets A Much-Needed Hug and I might even make Boba talk about his feelings before we take over Tattooine. Either way, Boba finds out Din has the darksaber and gets a real kick out of it. Eat your heart out, Kryze.

“So we intercept a shuttle, and use that to get some code cylinders?”

You look over to Cara, who nods. “Might work,” she says. Din snorts, but Cara ignores him. “We have a chance, but only if we work together.”

Din looks over to her. “I know that. Are you ready?”

“Drop us in, Fett,” Cara confirms, and you sigh. There are probably better, safer ways, but who has the time for that? You’re Boba Fett, you don’t need to take the slow safe route. You are indestructible, persistent.

The shuttle is easy enough to track down – by which you mean, it could be harder – and you get it on the trackers. “Ready, ade?”

A sharp clang, a few mutters and hisses, and Cara yells an affirmative. You could tell them to buckle in, but the gravity is working, and really, if they’re not ready for this then they’re doing something wrong. The ion bomb buzzes the shuttle’s circuits into nothing, leaving them free-floating and an easy target for such enterprising hunters as yourself and your little aliit.

You dock the ship, and they slink through. “Comms online.” Fennec climbs into the copilot’s seat, makes herself comfortable. Something in her stomach clicks, but she waves you off. You’ll find some engine lubricant next time there’s a free minute, she’s obviously not keen on the ship-engine grade stuff you’ve got on hand.

“Entering cockpit,” Cara whispers.

You can’t hear what they hear, and the fact Cara bothered to tell you is a pleasant surprise. Din’s voice comes next. “We’ve met. Is the kid alive?”

He better be. There’s a worrying degree of silence before Cara’s next order raps out. “Drop your weapon.”

More nothing happens, and both you and Fennec are getting a little twitchy, glancing at each other then back at the comm. It’s a peculiar reaction, to watch the source of sound as though for images, but it must be a human one because here you are both doing it.

“Which one?” asks Cara. Which one what? “Drop your blaster. Last chance.”

Fennec sighs. “Here we go.”

A blaster shot rings out, and a few moments later you hear the airlock go. “Guess we’re moving again, Fen,” you observe, and she huffs. “Go check on them. Don’t let their contact touch my ship.” In the empty cockpit whilst you disengage the seals and guide the ship away from the Imp shuttle, you spare a moment to consider what you’ve got yourself into, and the fact you are now voluntarily about to go seek out Bo-Katan kriffing Kryze and her cronies.

Your life is some galactic joke.

Bo-Katan freaking Kryze. She’s just so – how dare she imply you are lesser than her for just existing. Your buir was still buir, even if you did have a couple million sort-of-siblings running around. And, one thing she’s missing, is that you and they are not identical. You may look like the clone troopers, but they were advanced. Everything you could do they did faster, stronger, harder. They were created and crafted, not just a carbon copy.

You may have a few minor self-worth issues. (That is a straight-up lie. In fact, you could probably make a therapist or whoever very rich, especially with all your anger at Kryze. Who does she think she is? Leader of some fallen planet? What glory is there in that?)

Your little mental monologue bitching session is interrupted by Din’s entrance and the long sigh as he relaxes slightly into the seat. The silence between you is heavy with unsaid things, but not bad ones, deep in the way shared experiences and pain come to be.

“We’re going to need that shuttle,” you explain as he tips his visor towards the displayed coordinates. He grunts, which is less response than you hoped for but still more than you expected. “Reckon you can fly it?”

“Cara can.”

He’s too quiet, subdued and worried about his son all over again. “I want you to promise me something,” you say to the slow sparkle of passing stars.

He nods, turning that dark visor towards you curiously. The hyperspace casts peculiar shadows over the sharp beskar edges of his helmet. “What,” he says when you don’t immediately follow up.

You take a deep breath and let the memory, phantom-weight, brush over you. It is crippling, intense in a way that it barely ever is. Stars, she was so small. “When you find your son, hold him close. Hold him as close and as tight as you can, Din Djarin, and don’t you let go until he knows you love him.” Even to your own ears, your voice is rasping up in deep emotion.

Din turns his whole body to you, and then stills, pauses, held hesitantly as though he thinks you’re going to be angry. And maybe you will be, you don’t know yourself. You never talk about her. “Boba, did you…”

“Once. Long ago,” you admit, quiet like blown sand. Something bubbles inside you, some latent grief, and suddenly you can’t stand this, the normality, the banality of hyperspace. The sole constant in your life is hyperspace.

_One day, buir will take you to the stars. How’d you like that?_

You need to leave it.

“Let me know when we get there,” you order him, and then you slide down and secrete yourself in your bunk but it’s too dark, too tight and small and confined, and it feels like fear and -

_I have made a million mistakes and I hope you are not one. If you are out there, and I think you are, then I hope you are okay. I hope you are thriving. I hope, one day, we can meet again. I want to apologise. I am so sorry._

Then you close your eyes and force yourself to think about the plan, and not the tiny phantom pressure of your daughter’s head in your palm.

The scanners pick up a ship leaving the cruiser, and for a moment you consider disabling it, but Fennec comm right as you’re leaning for the tracer and says it’s the Jedi ship – which, what even is today – and for you to land in the hangar bay, so you do: you trust them, and if they say that it’s safe then you believe them. You believe in them, and that is – unusual, for you. It has been an exceptionally long time since you convinced yourself to believe in anything except yourself.

The ramp lowers and nobody is there waiting for your arrival. No shining knight, no dark-haired strong women, no green womp-rat-muppet. Nothing.

A shiver works down your spine. Something feels wrong, dangerous. For another minute or two you stand and wait on the ramp, braced for action at any moment. The silence is unsettling, reminding you of worse jobs you’ve had. You may be Boba Fett, Legend, but you are also only an aging human, albeit one who can take a squad of Stormies singlehandedly. The problem is that there’s far more than just Stormies on this vessel.

After a concerning pause in which your pings to your aliit go unanswered, the door whooshes open to let Fennec through, Din leaning on Cara behind her, looking definitely injured. There’s no sign of Moff Gideon, or of Kryze and her contingent. “We did it, Boba.”

You frown at the girls, and then out over the hangar bay as though the tiny green muppet will Force-bullshit his way into view. "Where's the kid?"

Din marches straight to your bunk and slams the door behind him. You blink, surprised; the child had been saved, and nobody appears to be severely injured, although judging by Cara’s face you need to take him a bucket or four of bacta.

"He is with his people," says Cara, hesitantly, and you think - _oh. I thought we were going to be his people._ "He, uh," but she tails off, sharing a glance with Fennec that speaks volumes, unreadable.

 _We are their people,_ you think again, looking behind you to where Din disappeared. “Come onboard. We’re safe here?” Fennec nods, and you close the ramp behind them. “What happened to him?”

They both shrug, but Fen signs _hurt bad_ subtly, in the old sign you taught her. It had been 99 who taught you that, weary and wise. You haven’t thought about him in decades, but then, you haven’t really thought about her either. How bitter a bonding point to have, that both of you have lost your children, and you think – perhaps cruelly, but mostly sadly – _wouldn’t it have been easier if they had died._

But it wouldn’t have been. If she is alive, if you don’t know her to be dead, then there’s still hope. One day she might come home, if you deserve such a thing.

The girls head to the galley, and you turn and wander up to your bunk. “Din?”

There is a shuffle. “No.”

Well, you weren’t expecting ease. “Can you talk about it?”

Another muffled no, and you stand there feeling too helpless, because trying to talk about her seems both too raw and not enough. You can feel it, that burning deep in your gut, but there is a chasm between _I was forced to leave_ and _I gave them up_ which, for a Mandalorian, may as well be insurmountable.

“Go away, Fett,” comes his muffled voice.

Before he can hurt any longer, you turn and head for your bacta crate. Thankfully, you still have enough bacta left over from helping Fennec to be able to take both e-bacta shots and bacta gel to the broken father holed away like a sick dragon. He’s about as dangerous as one. As you’re finishing, Cara heads off the ship, calling a farewell and that she’ll be in touch.

Fennec fills in the details for you. “She’s got Gideon in a cell. Kryze is going to take them to wherever it is she’s taking him, and she asked if we’d go tell Karga what happened. Apparently he’ll want to know Din is alive.”

“Very well. Set the course.”

You knock on your own door, because it really is one of those days where you’re doing that sort of thing instead of marching in there like you own the place, which you do, but he orders you away again bitterly. “I brought you bacta.”

The door opens a few inches, his hand – bare, bloodied – held out for your offerings. “You should leave me,” he croaks, embittered, angry, and unmodulated. No time is wasted in conversation before you hear the distinctive low hiss of the e-bacta injectors, and they clatter to the floor at his feet. The door shutters. “Go away.”

“I can’t do that,” you answer. Your duty is to these people, now, they are the only family you can have and you don’t want to lose family ever again. It is inevitable, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean you have to encourage it. You settle onto the floor with your datapad in hand. Might as well just crack on with analysing the underworld before you get to Tattooine.

Din's breath audibly shakes, even from the other side of the doors.

 _K'atini, Boba_ , comes your buir's voice up through your memory. Then, layering over it, your own voice and a phantom pressure against your chest, the monumental significance of a child's tiny weight, _oh, Ailyn, k'atini, little daughter_. "K'atini, Din. Be stubborn, be tenacious."

Time passes in bubbles and stretch breaks, long enough you’re eye-sick of the datapad and the ship’s walls around you. There comes a loud clunk, then his voice, but too quiet to parse the words. “What is it, ad? I can’t hear you.”

“Are you Mandalorian, Boba?”

You blink, thinking. He’s heard you mention being Mandalorian or not a few times. There must be some deeper reason for asking. Are you? “After a fashion. This armour is mine and a man is always more than just his armour; like many Mandalorians I consider it my very skin, but when it comes to a Creed?” You’re struggling to articulate it, never needed to do it before when just your name was plenty. Now that Jango Fett’s name has faded, now that the Clone Army with his face is long erased from living memory, you find yourself unwilling to just brush it away. A Creed is a Creed after all. “My ba’buir, Jaster Mereel, wrote the codex. Children, armour, mando’a, education, self-defense, the Mand’alor. I have no children but I will bring them no harm. I have my armour back. Between us we are trying to keep the language the Emperor stole from us. Education never ends; you and I understand this. Self-defence is self-explanatory.”

He is waiting expectantly, and when you don’t continue he prompts, “and the Mand’alor?”

“There isn’t one. Not one who would recognise me.”

There is another longish pause. “I think they should. You’re a good mando. A survivor. We need survivors.”

You slant your eyes towards the door. “I’m honoured to hear it. You are a good man. A good mando.” As you stand up you think you hear him mutter something, but you haven’t got time to ask him what he said. Such quiet mutterings are far harder to pick up with your post-sarlacc ears than they used to be. “Alright kid, I need to go and check the course. Where do you need to go?”

Nothing.

“You could come with me.” You want to comfort him, want to say something that can soothe the ragged edge of such grief, but then – you’ve never had a faith to be broken, and piling the loss of his ad on top of that? This is far beyond your range. “We’re heading to Nevarro, Cara wants us to talk to Karga.”

“And after?”

Despite the circumstances, you smile. “Tattooine.”

**Author's Note:**

> *firmly pushes Jango out of this fic* Boba, guys. I just. Boba, guys.  
> I have a truly insane amount of detailed explanation of things like relationship dynamics, worldbuilding, Boba and his relationship with being Mandalorian, Boba and the clones, Boba and Jango, Boba and Din..... hit me up on tumblr @graaaaceeliz if you want to talk Boba because I can and Will.


End file.
